In May, the company confirmed that it had reduced staff numbers within the studio, but kept 40 jobs. Those will now also go due to the studio’s closure.

Black Rock was also working on a secret project after Split/Second. Disney’s now confirmed it wasn’t greenlit for “further development.”

A statement from the company reads:

“Disney Interactive Studios confirms that Black Rock Studios’ current project has not been greenlit for further development, consequently the company informed employees yesterday of the intent to enter a consultation process on the proposal to close the studios.”

A source told EG that Disney was outsourcing games that Black Rock was capable of, and that it had mishandled the dev.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2011/06/23/black-rock-hiring-for-game-director-with-understanding-of-free-to-play-gaming/feed/0Ex-Black Rock staff form Roundcube Entertainmenthttp://www.vg247.com/2011/05/31/ex-black-rock-staff-form-roundhead-entertainment/
http://www.vg247.com/2011/05/31/ex-black-rock-staff-form-roundhead-entertainment/#commentsTue, 31 May 2011 22:45:44 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=174719Two ex-Black Rock staffers have founded a new studio, Roundcube Entertainment, in the wake of dramatic lay-offs at the Disney-owned developer.

GamesIndustry reports Nick Baynes and Ian Monaghan will serve as the new studio’s head and development director respectively.

The newly-formed company is yet to announce any projects.

Only around 30 staff remain at Block Rock, which is based in Brighton, after an estimated 100 lay-offs. Its games include Split/Second and Pure.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2011/05/31/ex-black-rock-staff-form-roundhead-entertainment/feed/5Disney confirms lay-offs at Black Rockhttp://www.vg247.com/2011/05/05/rumour-lay-offs-at-block-rock-splitsecond-sequel-shelved/
http://www.vg247.com/2011/05/05/rumour-lay-offs-at-block-rock-splitsecond-sequel-shelved/#commentsThu, 05 May 2011 11:12:49 +0000http://www.vg247.com/?p=168615Disney Interactive has confirmed to VG247 that it has laid off an unspecified number of employees at Black Rock.

It told us, however, it will remain at work on an unannounced project.

“Disney Interactive Studios confirms a reduction of its workforce from its Brighton-based internal game development studio, Black Rock Studios. The studio will continue its work on its current project,” the company told us in a statement this afternoon.

Eurogamer first reported this morning that 40 jobs were at risk. Its now been said that those 40 jobs are actually safe, but a further 100 jobs are at risk. The report also claimed that Split/Second 2 was in pre-dev, but had been canned.

The lay-offs bring an ongoing streamlining process to a head.

“The inactive portion of the studio has been expecting redundancies for months, so this doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It’s sad that it’s come to this of course, but for many people they’ll be quite happy to take the money and go, as they’ve been sitting around doing nothing for months,” EG’s source said.

The studios is said to be at work on a “promising” title, but despite assigning a “good proportion” of the existing employees to development, Disney apparently aren’t keen to commit a larger team to the “new and risky” endeavour.

Those not involved in the new project have been unable to convince the publisher to back a second new title.

“It seems Disney have been unable to provide us with a project to work on, and our concept pitches clearly haven’t gone down well (despite there being many of them),” the source commented.

“… We had a concept week (everyone in the studio working on small teams) to try to come up with new ideas, but nothing really stuck. We had a freemium week sometime later with similar goals too.”

“After Split/Second wrapped, we started work on Split/Second 2 pre-prod which was cancelled last December due to Disney Interactive’s new management and their changing priorities (the push towards freemium etc) – Split/Second 2 didn’t really fit in with that (despite some efforts to shoehorn it in).”

Black Rock is an experienced racing developer, having previously produced Pure and worked on the MotoGP series. Split/Second was its most recent release, in May 2010, and garnered near-universal critical approval for its over the top arcade stylings.

Disney CEO Bob Iger has said the company is to “probably” invest less in its console gaming efforts in future.

“We’ve seen a pretty big shift in games from console to what I’ll call multi-platform, everything from mobile apps to social networking games, and by putting John Pleasants in to run games, not only will be the focus on turning those businesses into profitability, but diversifying our presence in the business,” said Iger, speaking after confirmation of heavy losses for Disney’s gaming division today.

“It’s our goal not only to be profitable, but obviously to get there by shifting our investment and reducing our investment too.

“We probably will end up investing less on the console side than we have because of the shift we’re seeing in consumption and have a presence, albeit with probably less investment, in terms of game manufacturing on some of the newer platforms.”

So far this year, the company’s Black Rock racer Split/Second for PS3 and 360 and a tie-in for Toy Story 3 on PS3, 360, Wii and PS2.

Upcoming console titles include Tron Evolution for PS3, 360 and Wii from Propaganda Games and Junction Point’s Epic Mickey for Wii.

Black Rock has announced over on the official Facebook page for Split/Second three DLC packs for the racer.

Expected later this month, the first pack has new liveries to “really make your turbo-powered Elite vehicles stand out from the rest of the crowd”, while the second pack will be a “entirely new vehicle offering” called the High Octane Supercar Pack which is in the screen above.

Finally, as a way of saying “thanks to the community”, a free special edition based on the original Ryback Cyclone will be made available.

The packs will be made available on XBL and PSN in “the next couple of weeks”, and a major DLC pack featuring a new environment is coming in September.

Disney’s Black Rock studio has released a teaser for a new racing project, as you can see after the break.

More info’s promised in March.

Black Rock was the outfit behind ATV racer Pure.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2009/02/13/black-rock-teases-new-racer/feed/5Pure boss: Colour difference between 360 and PS3 is comparable to a “good LCD from a Plasma”http://www.vg247.com/2008/09/17/pure-boss-colour-difference-between-360-and-ps3-is-comparable-to-a-good-lcd-from-a-plasma/
http://www.vg247.com/2008/09/17/pure-boss-colour-difference-between-360-and-ps3-is-comparable-to-a-good-lcd-from-a-plasma/#commentsWed, 17 Sep 2008 14:04:39 +0000http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/09/17/pure-boss-colour-difference-between-360-and-ps3-is-comparable-to-a-good-lcd-from-a-plasma/

Speaking to VG247 today, Pure director Jason Avent said that the differences between PS3 and 360 were comparable to the differences between LCD and Plasma TVs.

“Their final render hardware seems to produce slightly different results in terms of how colours are represented and one is often softer than the other but it’s really only as different as a good LCD TV is from a Plasma,” said the developer.

Avent said working on PS3 with Pure had presented a “new challenge,” but that 360 and PS3 were much of a muchness in the right hands.

“We’ve been working on Xbox 360 for years now, so PS3 was a new challenge, yes,” he said.

“MotoGP 06 and 07 led on 360, but we were already developing PS3 versions of our technologies before we started Pure, so it wasn’t very far behind.

“They’re both great machines and if you do things right, there isn’t much difference between them in terms of capability.”

SI could be bothered to download and post more than 250Mb of Pure screenshots. More flying quad bikes than you could ever need. Take a look.

]]>http://www.vg247.com/2008/05/27/new-pure-shots-posted/feed/0New Pure movie shows big CGhttp://www.vg247.com/2008/02/24/new-pure-movie-shows-big-cg/
http://www.vg247.com/2008/02/24/new-pure-movie-shows-big-cg/#commentsSun, 24 Feb 2008 19:22:43 +0000http://www.videogaming247.com/2008/02/24/new-pure-movie-shows-big-cg/A new movie here of Disney quad racer Pure, hitting PC, PS3 and 360 this autumn. There’s some new CG in there that gives a good idea that this may well be competition-free at the end of year. We certainly haven’t seen much else like it planned for 2008. Take a look.

Here. You have to watch it in CVG’s shit-house movie player, but them’s the breaks. Pure’s the recently announced first title from Brighton-based Black Rock since it was taken over by Disney. All told, it looks proper wicked, man. No, seriously, it does look good. Plenty more on this soon.